


Mayfly December Romance

by pyrrhic_victoly



Series: Ephemera [2]
Category: Kyou Kara Maou
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Break Up, F/M, M/M, Moving On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-13
Updated: 2010-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-31 07:32:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhic_victoly/pseuds/pyrrhic_victoly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wolfram and Yuuri's tragic romance.  How it ended, and how it continued after the end.</p><p>A side story to "Ephemera".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mayfly December Romance

Theirs was not a storybook love. No one could have predicted that love would bloom from that kind of mess. After all, insulting the king's mother did not bode well for the start of courtship.

Their new king had been a stranger in a strange land. He was change, progress, and justice. In contrast, Wolfram represented the status quo. _Why fix something that wasn't broken?_ he had thought. _Why invite this foreign child to rule over our people?_

In the beginning, they clashed over everything, from government spending to the king's wardrobe. And yet, somewhere deep down, there was mutual respect. They were friends, and then as the years passed and they both matured, they became something more. But at the core of this _whatever it was_ that lay between them was friendship, always friendship. It took much coaxing and cajoling on Wolfram's part; much subtle pleading disguised as demands, and demands disguised as coy invitations, for Yuuri to succumb. For all his strength as the Maou, he was such a skittish man when it came to matters of the heart.

"I'm the black sheep in the family," Yuuri said in a rare bout of introspection. "My parents got married after the fifth date. They rushed everything! Shori never second guesses himself when he asks girls out, either. But me? I've never been popular in that way. There won't be many chances for a plain guy like me, so I need to take things slowly and make sure that, if I'm ever in one, the relationship is really what I want. Well, that's what I thought before I got here and my plans all got shot to hell."

"Don't you dare call yourself plain! You insult me, your beautiful fiance, when you imply that I have poor taste in partners!" Wolfram lifted his nose spectacularly high in the air. He looked down as haughtily as he could until he caught Yuuri's gaze.

He couldn't help but burst into laughter, his dramatic act ruined, cheeks pinking as he kissed his young love. His arms slid around the other man, pulling them flush together. Yuuri grunted in surprise at the first touch of lips, but opened up to accept his fiance.

Then he pulled back. Awkwardly scratching the back of his head, Yuuri tried to change the subject with stilted laughter. "Ahaha! Ha... So, um... Gunter said something about preparing to... ah, something about the supplies... we should..."

"Wimp."

Wolfram jerked the other man's head back for another kiss.

 

 

He sank to his knees before his king. He laid his head upon Yuuri's thigh and clung to his love, gasping as if his heart was seizing up. The vice gripped his whole being, the pain so intense that he could not think of how he would ever overcome this.

Wolfram trembled as he held Yuuri to him this way, until he felt a cool flow of healing magic pass through his body. He looked up to see Yuuri's hand above his head, encased in a blue-green glow.

"Thank you, Yuuri. It feels better when you do that."

"Anytime."

When Yuuri smiled, Wolfram noticed the faintest of lines at the corner of those dark eyes. His mouth opened to comment, but his throat closed up.

"Do you understand now, Wolfram?"

"No, you fool! Of course I don't!" The proud von Bielefelt in him wanted to scorn his king as he had been scorned, but the part of him that was just Wolfram, who loved Yuuri, wanted to cry and cling to his broken fairytale. He got up and faced his king on equal footing. "I will never understand."

"I'm freeing you. This way you don't have to be engaged to an old coot."

Wolfram took a deep breath. He breathed in the sight of his lover - the tall, imposing silhouette, the sharp lines of his jaw, the love in his eyes. He took it all in and placed a hand on Yuuri's heart. "I don't want to be free."

 

 

"You're as beautiful as the day we met. No, you've grown even more beautiful." It was true. When they had first met, they were equal in height and stature and Wolfram had been a fresh young beauty, gorgeous enough to be mistaken for a girl. And now? Now, he had finished that slow bloom and was a man in the prime of his life. Where once he had seemed like a spoiled brat, now his aristocratic air only made him appear all the more regal.

Wolfram sat at his former lover's bedside and indulged his ramblings. It was the least he could do to repay the man who had reopened his heart to his brother. Through Yuuri, he had been confronted by race, and been charmed by it. Through Yuuri, he had a human daughter. For all of that and more, he would try to remain patient as he listened to this nonsense.

"I've seen the girls looking at you."

"I don't look at them."

"But you look at Gisela."

Wolfram flushed hotly. "She's just a friend," he ground out.

"Oh come on, Wolf! I heard from Gunter how you used to have a crush on her. It's not a crime to admire other people once in a while, especially when your fiance is a wrinkly old bag like me! I'm not going to get jealous," he teased.

Fiance? Hah! What a cruel joke, Wolfram thought. They had broken their engagement so long ago. He pursed his lips and refused to respond to Yuuri's taunting.

Yuuri, too, was silent. After a moment, he spoke again, but much softer this time. "You should court someone. Do it for me, please?"

"Wimp! You're trying to turn me into a cheater like yourself!" Wolfram growled out. "I can't… I can't look at you anymore." He shook his head sadly and got up to leave, eyes averted.

Yuuri grabbed his wrist, and Wolfram startled at the weak grip.

"I love you, Wolf. I want you to be happy, and I know that having you stay with me will only bring you pain. I tried to get you to leave me before, but... I guess it wasn't enough. It's already my fault that you've suffered so much because I was too selfish to push you away when I first noticed what was happening. Please promise me you'll move on."

"I won't... " Wolfram shook his head again. Yuuri had broken their engagement _too_ soon, in his mind. They should still have been engaged - no, they should have been married. "I won't! Not until you…"

"Not until I'm gone? That won't be too long, for a Mazoku. For now, I just want your word."

And how could Wolfram say no to that? He could do nothing but bite his lips and nod as he raged in his heart.

_We should have been married!_

Theirs was not a storybook love. There was no happily ever after, no tragic lovers' suicide. There was just... one tiny sliver of time when two disparate rhythms matched up before beating away at different tempos. One slipped away and fluttered into the silence. It was a reality no scribe ever wanted to glorify in myths and legends.

 

 

Theirs was a kind of storybook love. It was not like valiant Prince Charming coming to rescue the damsel in distress. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to refer to Sergeant Gisela von Kleist as anything other than an accomplished soldier and doctor, and a very proudly self-sufficient woman, too. Rather, it was the tale of two childhood acquaintances who grew up together, attended school together, grew apart, and grew together again. In the end, the hero and heroine find that their destined one had been under their noses the entire time.

When her father had moved from von Kleist lands to the capitol, Gisela had come with him. He had been offered a position in the military academy, so she was to go there for schooling. There, she came to know two princes near her age: Lord Conrart Weller, her father's most prized student, and Lord Wolfram von Bielefelt, the most beautiful, regal, arrogant, spoiled, haughty, pompous _ass_ she had ever met.

She would soon realize that Wolfram had that same effect on nearly everyone. They loved him until he opened his mouth, whereupon it became obvious that he looked down his perfectly proportioned aquiline nose at everyone, and then they hated him until he finally swallowed his pride and shut up.

That he was willing to admit his own faults and strive to better himself was what set him apart from some others of his station, but Gisela still did not think very highly of such a man, whose hands were softer than her own.

It wasn't until they were forced together that she began to revise her opinion of him. It was obvious early on in her basic lessons that, despite her father's battle prowess, swordsmanship was not her calling. When the time came to choose a career path, Gisela opted to train as a field medic. This required much more magical knowledge, and so she was to be apprenticed to a renowned healer. That was how she met Lady Suzanna Julia von Wincott, who had just taken up the post as Prince Wolfram's private tutor.

Lady Julia was not like other nobles. She did not believe in the caste system, or in any social inequalities at all. She taught her two students together, regardless of the fact that one was a prince of the realm, whose lineage stretched back to Shinou himself, and the other was barely nobility through adoption - better off than a scandalous halfbreed, but with about as much political clout as a bastard child. Lady Julia did not care for that; she cared only for magical talent and willingness to learn.

Eventually, Wolfram and Gisela each came to accept the presence of the other during their lessons. Lady Julia had once teased them for having their heads too close together when they were sharing a tome of incantations. And when Yuuri came into the picture, despite Wolfram's preoccupation with the other boy, she began to see yet another side of Wolfram - one who was willing to disguise himself as a commoner and eat barbecued squid with the rest of the crew without turning his nose up even once. The rest was, as they say, history.

The fairytale was coming to a close. It was _finally_ coming to a close, for the usual legendary lovers got together in about a fortnight, not nearly two hundred years. But finally! With hard work, respect, and trust, they were to start building their happily ever after.

Now, however, Gisela couldn't help but worry just a bit. It was a brave new world they were living in, where Lady Julia's ideals from so long ago had been carried out as law by King Yuuri. But still, it was nearly unheard of for a woman like her to rise to such a position. Just as there had never been a human royal consort before Dan Hiri Weller, there had never been one like her. An orphan, to a military brat, to... Queen.

Yes, that was what she was now.

Did she have regrets? Reservations? She knew she was second place in Wolfram's heart, but that was... all right, in a way, since the number one spot had been someone who had touched all their lives and changed them for the better.

Gisela had idolized Lady Julia so long ago. She had childishly told her father that Julia was the only person she had ever wanted to marry. The difference was that they had not entered into a romantic relationship the way Wolfram had with Yuuri. However, the way Wolfram moved on was rather a lot like how she had gone about her life after Julia had died, so she thought she understood.

There would always be ghosts between them – the ghosts of their first loves, Julia and Yuuri. But time would heal all wounds that her magic could not. Her love for Julia was still there in the back of her mind, but her heart never ached at the memories anymore. She was able to think about Julia and have the memories bring a smile to her face. Someday, maybe not anytime soon, but someday, she hoped Wolfram would feel the same.

For now, though, it was all right. Wolfram sometimes had that haunted, tortured look in his eyes, but her Wolfram was a strong man. He was a great man and a great king.

It was her duty, then, to become a great queen. With this in mind, Gisela von Kleist took her husband's hand and steeled herself for their first public appearance after the marriage. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and blew the ghosts back into their resting places.

When she opened them again, she saw shining green eyes and a beautiful smile. This was his element. He bloomed like vibrant, heady spring.

Wolfram lifted his lady's hand and kissed it.

"Shall we?"

"Yes, let's."


End file.
